“I want to know how you made that happen.”
“It wasn’t me. That would lack credibility.”
“I’m dead serious, Ivan. How did you make those dogs lose their minds? Or do you just give off some kind of scent or something?”
“I can’t believe you’re trying to pin this on me. That’s as silly as the idea of me being a werewolf.”
“Look, asshole, wolves are dogs--”
“Oooooh, look who knows his biology!”
“--and there’s no way this is a coincidence.”
“Well, then, if it’s not a coincidence, I must have the power to control dogs, or at least make them go nuts. Is that what you want to hear?”
“If it’s the truth.”
Ivan let out a high-pitched, incredulous laugh. “Listen to you! Has the big bad thug-for-hire opened his mind to the possibility of the paranormal?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Oh, but two hours ago, if I’d told you that you shouldn’t mess with me because I’ve got the power to send a bunch of killer dogs after you, you would have just made fun of me. You would’ve been all ‘Oh, dude, if you’re trying to scare me with your doggie powers, don’t do it from inside a cage,’ right?”
“You were the one insisting that the whole werewolf thing was ridiculous.”
“Yes, but I was the one who had something to lose by being a werewolf. You came at it from neutral ground. Now you’re a believer, and all it took were a few nasty dog bites. I’m proud of you, George. This has opened a whole new world of excitement for you.”
“I didn’t say I was a believer.”
“You implied it. That’s all I need to declare victory.”
George glanced at Michele. “I don’t really believe he’s a werewolf.”
Michele said nothing. She still looked more concerned about being murdered by kidnappers than whether anybody believed in lycanthropes.
“Let’s take a vote,” said Ivan. “I believe I’m a werewolf. George reluctantly believes I’m a werewolf. What about you, Lou?”
“I believe that you need to stop talking.”
“Or what?”
“Or else.”
“That’s the best you’ve got? Really? You know what, I’m embarrassed to be your prisoner. Flat-out humiliated. It was cool for a while, when I thought that a couple of scary mob guys had me, but you two buffoons? I might as well be in the hands of the--”
“Enough!”
“Don’t you want to know what non-threatening group I was going to compare you to?”
“One more word,” said George. “Just one more word, and I will come back there and beat the snot out of you.”
“Bet you won’t. So what about you, Michele? We’ve got two votes in favor and one non-committal. Do you think I could possibly be a werewolf?”
“I don’t know.”
“It’s not about what you know, it’s about what you think. I’m the only one who knows for certain. So do you think I’m a werewolf?”
“Sure, whatever.”
“Three votes in favor. That’s a majority, even if Lou changes his cowardly cop-out vote to ‘no.’ Looks like I’m a fuckin’ werewolf with the power of dog control, ladies and gentlemen. Now what are we going to do about that?”
“Not a thing,” said George. “The plan stays the same.”
“The plan to deliver me to Mr. Dewey in Tampa so I can bite and transform him? Come on, guys, there’s no need to be discrete around our new friend Michele, is there? After all, you’re planning to kill her.”
“Nobody is getting killed.”
“Nobody except poor Michele.”
“Don’t listen to him,” George told her.
“Right, don’t listen to the guy in the cage,” Ivan said. “Clearly there can be no wrongdoing in a situation that involves people in cages. Maybe you’ll be lucky and their plans revolve around slavery instead of murder, but either way, I’m not getting a strong ‘drop you off at the hospital and everything will be all right’ vibe from this, are you?”
“Seriously, don’t listen to him,” said George. “We’re going to let you go.”
“Then why haven’t you done it already?” Ivan asked. “She asked to be let go as soon as she saw me. True gentlemen would have honored the poor doomed victim’s request.”
“We’ve got shit to figure out first.”
“Then figure it out. It sounds like I’m the only one trying to figure things out, to be completely honest. Oooooh, I hope if you decide to rape her, you take it outside--there are some things I just don’t enjoy watching.”
“We should just let her out,” said Lou. “She won’t tell.”
“Of course she won’t,” said Ivan. “It’s not like she’s seen anything memorable.”
“Get off at the next exit,” George told Lou.
“Why?”
“Because we need some answers.”
“No, no, this is an ‘ignorance is bliss’ deal. Let’s leave this alone.”
“I’m not comfortable with not knowing what’s going on when things are this severely screwed up. We left behind a bunch of dead dogs and a dead gas station guy--that’ll be on the news. We need a full understanding of what we’re dealing with.”
“We shouldn’t have brought the girl.”
“Yeah, I know. We weren’t thinking right.”
“I never said to bring her in the first place.”
“Okay, fine, I wasn’t thinking right. The dog teeth in my skin messed with my thought process. Are you happy?”
“Just saying.”
“They’re going to kiiiiiiiiiilllllllll you,” Ivan sang out from the back.
“We should call Ricky, at least,” said Lou. “Let him know what happened.”
George sighed. “Yeah, you’re right. Damn it.”
He took out his cell phone and pulled up Ricky The Prick from his “recent contacts” list. Ricky answered on the first ring. “Hiya, sweetie. How’s the werewolf doing?”
“He’s fine. But we had a pretty big problem.”
“Fleas? Hairballs?”
“Ricky, don’t make me--”
“All right, all right. Jeez, you sound tense. What’s the problem?”
“We stopped to get gas, and about a dozen dogs attacked us. Like they’d gone crazy. One of them bashed itself half to death against the van.”
“You for real?”
“Yeah. Lou had to shoot two of them. The guy who worked there, they ripped his goddamn neck open.”
“No kidding? He died?”
“Unless you can live with most of your throat gone.”
“Wow. I’ve never seen somebody get mauled to death by dogs before. I mean, I’ve seen videos, but never in real life. You guys all right?”
“I’m kind of bit up, but I’ll be okay.”
“You should put some antiseptic on the bites.”
“Thanks. I’ll do that. Any idea why a bunch of dogs would suddenly attack us like that?”
“Who do you think you’re calling, National Geographic? How would I know?”
“We think the werewolf was responsible.”
“Uh, by ‘werewolf’ you mean the guy that nutcase Bateman thinks is a werewolf, right?”
“Yeah, him.”
“This is a joke, isn’t it? You’re trying to get back at me for giving you the crappy werewolf assignment. Y’know, there are a lot of worse places you can be. A guy at a sewage treatment plant isn’t paying his protection money. Can you believe that? A sewage treatment plant. How do you get protection money out of them in the first place? The world is crazy. You could be on your way to the turd processing factory right now, so don’t--”
“Are you done?”
“I don’t think I was supposed to say anything about the sewage place. Don’t tell anybody, okay?”
“Enough, Ricky! We need to know if we should keep going where we’re going, or if we should get off the road for a while until things blow over.”
“Oh, you should definitely keep going. They want the werewolf this evening at the latest. Where did you say the dogs were?”
“It’s a small town called Hachiholata or something like that.”
“Can you spell it for me?”
“H-A-C...” George trailed off. “No, I can’t spell it for you! Just find it!”